__________________If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen. ― Samuel Adams

You can do some whittling, to see how it handles more delicate tasks. Fuzz sticks for fire starting, traps (nothing too complicated, a figure four or something like that), spoons or something like that if you're into it. While they aren't super hardcore tests they tell you a lot about the handle ergonomics and the edge geometry.

Free hanging manila rope is another fun test. It might take a while to get the technique down but it gives you some feedback on the knive's slashing ability.

Batoning would be good as well. It puts the blade under quite a bit of stress if hard or knotty wood is used.

__________________

Now hatred is by far the longest pleasure;
Men love in haste, but they detest at leisure.
- Lord Byron (George Gordon Noel Byron), Don Juan
(canto XII, st. 6)

So, I was going to do this over the weekend, but we had some household issues, not the least of which was a break in our main water line UNDER my driveway that needed to be repaired and had our house without water for a couple of days.

Anyways, I got some testing done today.

I was going to whack up this old pallet that I had, but when I got to getting it ready, I noticed it was supported well in the center for chopping and is the perfect height. So, it was spared the Wrath of the Outcast.

Not so lucky was our friend the NHL Hockey puck again.

As you can see, while the Outcast did not go all the way through in one top down strike, it did get halfway there and the puck was afixed like glue to the blade, meaning it was a narrow and deep cut.

Since it was attached to the blade, I just raised it about eye level and slapped it down on the center 2x4 of the pallet and the blade went right through.

Now, there is a term in Structural Engineering ( someone here will know it ) that when you break the cohesive, sectional/structural, whatever density of a sphere, like the hockey puck with the missing side, it is greatly weakened. I don't know why, I just remember it from some point in my past.

As such, I just put the pieces back up there, and with one decent overhead chop, the same as I used previously, the blade went right through the hockey puck with no problems what-so-ever.

So, the hockey puck wasn't up to much of a challenge, but what else would we encounter if we had this on our hip in a time of crisis or need??

Well, what if you had to cut a power line, or a power line being used to secure something, in a hurry? Well, the handle is insulated rubber ( while not rated I am sure it would provide enough protection for household 120/240 voltage ).

Here is a piece of old wire I had. It's (5) pieces of 14AWG inside a plastic coating. Not really anything major, you could go through it with your hand held cutters pretty easily, but would it damage the blade to cut it with the Outcast??

Uh, no. No challenge what-so-ever. I needed about a 12 inch downward strike and even that marred up the cutting surface and the Outcast made quick work of the wire.

So, how about chopping some lumber? I had an old piece of 2 x 4 treated fence material that was about 6 inches long. Pretty much worthless, except for hacking on.

I turned it on it's side, so I could attack the cross grain to see how the blade would bite. In the first strike, my grip wasn't solid and the blade twisted, which created that nice little arc you see in the picture.

Total penetration is about one inch. I would imagine if I hit something fresh, like a tree stalk, it would go much deeper. This is treated and dry wood that is also not a large enough piece that that I could secure it and get a real run at it.

With the grain was not even a challenge. Like a hot knife through butter. And finally a shot of the over penetration damage to the pallet I was using as my cutting board.

Plenty of chop in this weapon and I haven't scratched the surface yet of things I am betting it will do. Definitely a keeper in my opinion based on the price.

__________________If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen. ― Samuel Adams